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antianakin · 6 months

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An AU where Obi-Wan and Satine are somehow forced into an arranged marriage post-Civil War, like Satine can't become Duchess if she's not married because she's a woman or she's too young, or maybe she decides to join the Republic post-Civil War in order to give herself legitimacy as a leader and gain herself enough followers to effectively force a peace without causing another civil war, but the Republic is reluctant to let them in and Satine discovers a workaround where if she marries a Republic citizen or something as a world leader she can use that to gain entry into the Republic. She asks Obi-Wan to help her out and he leaves the Order for her because she has literally no other options available and this will hopefully bring peace to Mandalore and allow Satine the chance to change things for the better, even though it means he loses EVERYTHING and has to give up who he is, his family, his friends, his home, etc.

And the marriage goes terribly because Satine and Obi-Wan's "tension" or whatever was basically just a trauma bond combined with teenage hormones and while he respects her ambitions, she never truly understands what he's given up for her and she doesn't entirely respect the Jedi culture sometimes and so Obi-Wan is absolutely miserable among the Mandalorians. None of them accept him, hardly any of them even LIKE him, he doesn't have any real power politically because Satine is too worried about people thinking she's letting an outsider rule through her and wanting to establish herself as a competent leader on her own, and Mandalorian culture is just so vastly different from the Jedi. There's a lot he DOES like about it, obviously, every culture has its own beauty to it, but it's not HIS culture and there's a lot about it that goes vastly against what the Jedi believe in and teach that makes it really uncomfortable for him sometimes. Satine and Obi-Wan just end up in screaming arguments all the time and can barely stand each other just a few years into the marriage, but they can't get a divorce because Satine doesn't want to admit to that kind of weakness or mistake or seem like someone who just made a political marriage for her own agenda (even though that's effectively exactly what she did, as Obi-Wan points out).

There's other tensions that come up, as well, like the problem of heirs. Obi-Wan and Satine DO try, but it never seems to actually work, and Satine's worry that she'll have made all of these changes to make Mandalore peaceful only for it to fall into civil war again upon her death if she doesn't have an heir means that she keeps trying to insist on more attempts and getting upset with Obi-Wan when it inevitably doesn't work. They end up in separate bedrooms because of this, despite the gossip this inevitably creates about their relationship fracturing. Eventually, Bo-Katan shows up with the baby she had but refuses to keep and asks Satine to raise in her place, and Satine agrees so long as Bo-Katan allows Satine to name the baby her heir. Bo-Katan agrees, and Satine stops trying to create an heir of her own in favor of raising Korkie as her heir.

Obi-Wan also keeps trying to find work-arounds to Satine's reluctance to let him help her politically. He accepts that she doesn't want him in the room when she's holding council and he can't be ON the council, but even when he suggests something as simple as just discussing things together in the privacy of their own bedroom so he can try to help carry the burden with her, Satine refuses to do even that much just in case people start suspecting that she's taking advice from him and assume he is ruling through her. Obi-Wan ends up entirely cut off from all political work and decisions, Satine never tells him anything about what's going on at all and never wants his advice on how to lead Mandalore. She barely even allows him near Korkie to make sure no one ever questions Korkie's right to succeed her or his ability to lead Mandalore.

Obi-Wan attempts to stay in contact with some of the Jedi, but they're often busy and can't respond very quickly, if they respond at all, so those relationships start to fade. Only Qui-Gon keeps up any kind of regular communication and even that is still relatively sporadic depending on how his missions go. He tries to cling to the Jedi teachings he remembers as best he can rather than assimilating into Mandalorian culture, something that further alienates him from the Mandalorian people. Satine had given him formal clothing to wear and had told him that, as her spouse, he had to present himself a certain way, which meant he could not continue to wear Jedi or Jedi-style clothing. But he continues to meditate as best he can, at least once a day, reciting the meditation mantra he was taught as a child to ensure he never forgets it: there is no emotion, there is peace.

Satine hates that he seems generally uninterested in most Mandalorian customs, even though he knows them and has studied them as best he can. She sees his continued interest in practicing Jedi culture as a rejection of Mandalorian culture and doesn't really understand Obi-Wan when he says that they often feel diametrically opposed. He cannot do both, and she's asked him to give up enough of his Jedi heritage as it is, it feels cruel to ask him to give up what little is left to him for her own comfort. Satine points out that he wasn't BORN a Jedi, so it shouldn't really matter to let go of it. Obi-Wan doesn't speak to her for weeks after that, and while she does apologize for having hurt him, she still doesn't entirely understand, and Obi-Wan isn't interested in explaining anymore, something that just makes her angry all over again and the two of them have to agree to simply never discuss the topic again.

Obviously all of this creates irreparable damage to their relationship. Satine's youth when she took over Mandalore caused her to focus exclusively on what she believed needed to be done to solidify her position so she could do what was best for her people, regardless of what that meant for Obi-Wan. She doesn't INTEND to hurt him and abandon him, but she married him for political reasons even if she had feelings for him. Obi-Wan's desire to replace the purpose he'd had as a Jedi with some kind of purpose on Mandalore causes him to push Satine to give things in their relationship that she's unwilling to give, and her refusal to meet him halfway and his alienation from her life creates resentment in him. Even as they grow older and Satine could theoretically try to rectify some of these mistakes and allow him to help her more politically, there is a rift between them that neither one knows how to cross. So they don't; Satine continues to put all of her focus on politics and Obi-Wan keeps his distance. They just continue to grow further and further apart without any way to free themselves from the black hole that is their marriage.

The one time they manage to get along is when Obi-Wan gets word that Qui-Gon died on Naboo. Satine finds him in his room after he didn't show up for something and he's practically catatonic on the floor, the room in a state of disarray. She sits down next to him and just offers him her silent presence until eventually he reaches over to hold her hand and she grasps it back. The two of them sit on that floor for the entire night until she has to leave to go to a meeting in the morning. They never discuss it.

And then TCW comes around and we're just assuming canon went mostly as per usual somehow and so the war still starts and the Jedi are leading the clone army and Death Watch has been building over on Concordia and Ferus Olin shows up on Mandalore to figure out what's going on. Ferus tries to speak to Obi-Wan because he'd heard a lot about Obi-Wan from Siri even though they'd obviously never had a chance to meet and Siri had mostly fallen out of contact with Obi-Wan by the time she took on Ferus, but he has very little time to do much more than tell Obi-Wan who he is and pass on the news that Siri had died recently during the war.

Then Satine goes to speak to Coruscant to convince them that she's NOT the one sending people to attack supply ships and she ends up bringing Obi-Wan with her. Obi-Wan isn't allowed to take part in the political dinner she has with Ferus and the other senators, so he wanders and ends up meeting Ferus's men, including Waxer, Boil, and Cody. Cody is initially more stiff and formal given Obi-Wan's assumed political position as Satine's spouse, but he warms up to Obi-Wan eventually, especially when Obi-Wan is able to sense the spider droids in the cargo area and proves himself a decent shot. Obi-Wan asks for stories of Ferus because he was fairly certain he wouldn't get a chance to really get to know him on this trip, but he'd been close with Ferus's old master and wanted to get to know the student Siri had trained in the only way available to him. Waxer and Boil are more than happy to tell him what stories they know and even Cody joins in eventually. A few other troopers switch out with Waxer and Boil later and Obi-Wan is able to get even more stories. This is the closest Obi-Wan has felt to a group of people in almost 20 years and he feels practically giddy about it.

When they arrive on Coruscant, Obi-Wan is told to stay in the apartments they're given, but when things go sideways for Satine, she has no one else she can call for help that she trusts except Obi-Wan, so he still comes in to help her with the assassins and manages to make his way into the Senate building to pass over the evidence she'd acquired to Padme, someone Satine believed to be trustworthy. It works, and Satine is able to be "neutral" in the war without having to leave the Republic. Before they leave, though, Satine tries to insist that Obi-Wan should go visit the Jedi Temple, try to see if any of his friends are currently there, just experience being there again, but he refuses. When she tries to push the issue, Obi-Wan snaps at her to drop it and insists that they just leave immediately. She does, and they leave without Obi-Wan being able to get anyone's contact information.

However, Satine is different after this. This was perhaps the first time in almost two decades that the two of them had actually worked TOGETHER on something and it reminded her of how they had used to be. It reminds her of the person Obi-Wan used to be, and the person he was supposed to become, the person he'd chosen to give up for her and her goals for Mandalore. And she hates the person she sees now, this defeated, jaded man she's helped create. So she goes back to him when they arrive on Mandalore and tries to talk to him again about why he didn't want to visit the Jedi Temple. Obi-Wan isn't receptive initially, asking her why she cares and rolling his eyes at her when she claims that she cares because she cares about him. But eventually, her gentle nudging gets him to admit that it would've hurt more than he could bear to walk in his home again knowing he couldn't stay. And it would've been too painful to see his people caught in a war that was killing them, to know just how many of his friends were now dead, and be unable to do anything to help them. It felt almost like it would've been insulting for him to have done so. Satine tells him that she doesn't quite understand, obviously, she'll likely never entirely understand how he feels, but she knows now that she doesn't NEED to understand. She just needs to accept how he feels and be there for him. She asks if there's anything she can do to help, and Obi-Wan is silent for a moment, almost stunned by this changed version of his wife, before telling her that there's nothing she can do to help him with this, but he'll let her know if that changes.

Their relationship doesn't really MEND afterwards, but it becomes less actively hostile. Satine tells him about her day sometimes, including the political things she gets involved in. She asks him questions about his time as a Jedi and listens when he chooses to say something (and when he tells her he'd rather not discuss it). They occasionally take meals together now, although they're often awkward and uncomfortable. Satine starts very VERY quietly looking into the option of a divorce. She doesn't say anything to Obi-Wan in case she can't follow through on it, but she at least wants to know her options.

When Padme shows up, she invites Obi-Wan to dine with them and when they go visit the children's hospital. When the council meets, she invites both Padme AND Obi-Wan, and it's the first time Obi-Wan ever sits in on a meeting with the council. Padme still asks to speak, but Obi-Wan tries to stay as unobtrusive as possible. Even during the rest of Satine's hunt for the perpetrator of the poisoned drinks, he keeps to himself. Right up until she starts threatening the innocent dock worker if he doesn't blow up the warehouse. He steps in and defends the dock worker's insistence that the warehouse could have evidence in it that could actually lead them to who allowed this to happen and while he understands her anger at the situation, making a statement isn't worth losing valuable time and information. Satine almost snaps back at him before his words sink in and she recognizes them to be true and she allows the warehouse to stay, but orders that it be quarantined and blocked off from the public.

Satine still wants to call for Jedi assistance in looking into the issue and Quinlan Vos is sent to help her. Obi-Wan remembers him from before he left, they'd been friends and he remembers being attracted to Quinlan and thinking Quinlan might have similar feelings back, but neither had acted on it and they hadn't quite known each other well enough to keep in contact after he married Satine. Much to Obi-Wan's surprise, he's no less attracted to Quinlan now than he was as a teenager, but it's not something he can actually act on and Quinlan is here to do a job anyway. But Quinlan remembers Obi-Wan, too, and takes the opportunity to get to know him again. His laid-back attitude and sarcastic quips start pulling Obi-Wan out of his shell a little. Satine takes a step back on this one and allows Obi-Wan to be her primary "ambassador" between the government and the Jedi representative, which allows Obi-Wan to get out and do something more productive to actually help Mandalore finally and gives him more time to bond with Quinlan. They discover the Prime Minister's secret black market dealings. Because they're still within the Republic, their supply of goods isn't actually THAT impacted, Almec is just a greedy asshole.

When Quinlan leaves, he insists on leaving his contact information with Obi-Wan and while he does warn that, due to the nature of his work, he likely won't be able to immediately respond very often, he'll make sure to always respond once he's in a position to do so and Obi-Wan should feel free to just keep sending/leaving messages for him. Obi-Wan says he'll think about it, but he sends his first message the next day. The contact is still pretty sporadic, Quinlan sometimes doesn't respond for a week or two at a time, but true to his word, he DOES always respond eventually and always seems happy to have received Obi-Wan's communications.

And then Maul invades Mandalore with Death Watch. Obi-Wan tries to speak up again when Satine says the people have made their choice, he tries to convince her that this fight is hardly over and if she was able to bring together all of the warring clans and force them into a 20-year-peace, she can fight this and keep Death Watch from outplaying her. She points out that Death Watch is armed while most of her guards were killed when the criminals attacked, but she agrees to at least TRY to negotiate and win back the hearts and minds of the people. When she and Obi-Wan show up to negotiate, Pre Viszla isn't there, Maul is, and he immediately kills her. Obi-Wan is barely able to escape because his use of the Force to hold Maul back shocks him enough to give Obi-Wan an opening and Bo-Katan shows up at the last second and gets him to a ship.

Obi-Wan is devastated by the events, obviously, he never wanted Satine DEAD or Mandalore run by a Sith and they'd just started to fix things between them, but a guilty part of him is also relieved because he's finally free. He goes to Coruscant to request asylum from the Republic and and he ends up staying within the Jedi Temple in order to receive their protection. The Jedi set Obi-Wan up with a mind healer to help him through not just the trauma of Death Watch and Maul's attack on Mandalore, but the impact of the entire last few decades since he left the Order. Obi-Wan immediately sheds his formal Mandalorian clothing and starts wearing Jedi robes again, he spends a lot of time reading in the Archives and meditating in the gardens and just wandering around the Temple and sort-of soaking up the serenity that still exists there despite the war and its effect on the Jedi. It's painful to know how many of his old friends and mentors are already lost, still, but there are still many left alive and the Temple still stands. It's still a bastion of hope. Instead of the painful visit he anticipated the last time he was on Coruscant, he can feel himself beginning to heal the moment he steps foot back in the Temple.

He speaks to Yoda quite a lot and while Yoda does ask if Obi-Wan has considered rejoining the Order, Obi-Wan isn't really sure. He'd obviously be a particularly unorthodox case since he'd need to finish (restart really) his training at a very old age and his old Master is long dead. Yoda tells him that Obi-Wan definitely isn't ready yet, he needs to heal a little more, but he hasn't lost as much of his training as he thinks he has, and after the war, they'll need more good Jedi to help replenish their numbers. Yoda promises to take him on as his last student if he does choose to come back, but also promises him that none of them will think any less of him if he decides it's no longer the right path for him to walk. Obi-Wan agrees to think on it.

Eventually, Obi-Wan meets Quinlan again and the attraction they'd once had for each other as teenagers rekindles and combines with the friendship they'd begun developing the last time they met. Obi-Wan is uncertain about having sex given that his only experiences with it have been the disastrous attempts at creating an heir with Satine that were so emotionally draining and so damaging to their relationship, but Quinlan takes it slow and makes sure they both have a good time and doesn't just walk away afterwards, but stays until the morning. They spend time training together, with Obi-Wan trying to remember what he'd been taught before and Quinlan giving him pointers and offering to spar whenever he's up to it.

One day, Obi-Wan is wandering the halls, just looking at the artwork on the walls of the Temple, when he hears someone address him as "Your Grace" and he turns to see Cody standing nearby. Obi-Wan is exceedingly happy to have confirmation that Cody has survived the intervening time since they'd last seen each other and offers to show Cody around the Temple a little (Cody's been given a tour before, but he opts not to tell Obi-Wan that, besides it's a big place and he'll probably have different places to show Cody than Ferus had). They end up spending all day together at the Temple and agree to meet up again before Cody has to leave. This time, Obi-Wan makes sure to get Cody's contact information before he goes and they continue to keep in contact with each other as often as they can.

Bo-Katan eventually shows up at the Temple and demands that he help her fix and restore Mandalore after Maul and Death Watch's takeover because he may have been an outsider, but he was married to Satine for two decades, he has a responsibility to Mandalore, etc etc. And he refuses. He gave his entire life to Mandalore, he gave up everything to try to help Satine fix Mandalore and look where it led. Satine is dead now, he won't make the same mistake twice. If Bo-Katan wants to try to fix what she broke on her home planet, she can go through the proper channels and ask the Republic Senate for assistance. He owes Mandalore nothing. Bo-Katan asks if he ever even loved Satine at all. He looks her dead in the eye and says, "Did you?" Bo-Katan leaves.

Maybe at one point, he ends up running into Anakin in the Temple, like maybe Anakin sits at Obi-Wan's table for a meal or something and he's clearly agitated, so Obi-Wan tries to be polite and ask if he's okay and because Obi-Wan is a complete stranger, Anakin sort-of snaps and tells Obi-Wan things he likely shouldn't. He's probably sleep deprived and caught up in his head and barely thinking about the ramifications of what he's doing, he's just upset and needs to talk to SOMEONE. Maybe he's had an argument with Padme or thinks she's cheating on him or something to that effect, so he can't talk to Padme and he hasn't been able to make it to Palpatine yet, so he's stuck at the Temple and Obi-Wan kind-of just ends up caught in the crossfire, for better or worse, and figures out not only that Anakin is married to a sitting senator (from a planet that doesn't allow their senators to be married no less), but that he did SOME kind of horrible thing not too long ago that his secret wife is aware of and that definitely breaks the Jedi code. Obi-Wan does his best to navigate the minefield that is this conversation before Anakin just sort-of wanders off and then immediately decides to report what he's learned to the Council.

The Council calls Anakin in and interrogates him about this and they speak to Padme to try to get to the bottom of it. Both of them deny it, but it turns out that the Jedi interrogating Anakin and Padme about it spurs one of Padme's handmaidens into finally bringing the evidence she's been collecting to the attention of the Naboo government. She has evidence of Padme being secretly married to a Jedi, evidence that Padme has used her relationship with Anakin to ensure he prioritizes Naboo, evidence that Padme has ditched her responsibilities as a senator to spend time with Anakin. And while Padme had no issue lying to the Jedi Council, especially when all they had was hearsay from one witness, she can't lie to her own government when it's her own handmaiden who is presenting all of this evidence against her. She HAS to confess and her confession inevitably brings down Anakin, too.

The Council offer Anakin the opportunity to make a different choice, to terminate his marriage with Padme and re-commit to the Order. He'd have to be removed from his position as a General in the GAR and grounded to the Temple to speak to a mind healer until the Council decided his commitment was genuine. Anakin initially refuses, but when he tries to go back to Padme, she turns him away. She chose to admit to having covered up Anakin's massacre of the Tuskens as well and that admission turned the accusations from something fairly simple to something much more heinous. Neither Naboo nor the Republic care about the Tuskens, but they do care about one of the Jedi charged with protecting them having massacred a village down to the last child and a sitting senator not reporting him for it. Palpatine has already laid the groundwork for the people of the galaxy to fear the Jedi, so this new information about Anakin is seen as proof that the Jedi could turn on anybody if sufficiently pushed. Padme is going to face serious consequences for covering it up, but the Queen steps in and promises Padme her protection if she agrees to terminate the relationship and promise she'll never see Anakin again. Padme agrees.

Anakin goes back to the Jedi before Palpatine can get to him and agrees to their terms. The relationship is over with Padme, he'll accept the demotion and the mind healing sessions in order to remain a Jedi because it's all he has left. Palpatine can't really speak to him because Anakin's basically under seclusion in the Temple. He's not really speaking to anybody. He does ultimately figure out that it was Obi-Wan who snitched to the Council about him and hates Obi-Wan for it and never wants to speak to him again. Obi-Wan has no problems with that, but he hopes Anakin figures out how to get better, that much anger can't be good for anyone. Ultimately, the mind healing starts to work. Anakin starts being just a little more mindful and starts accepting certain things about Palpatine so that when the Council offers him a job speaking to Palpatine and basically spying on him for the Council, he accepts in order to earn back their trust. Palpatine still tries to manipulate him, pulls out every trick in the book, but this time, Anakin has just enough of a buffer to keep from falling right back into Palpatine's orbit. He figures out Palpatine's a Sith, informs the Council, and ends up invited along when they go to arrest him. Palpatine doesn't survive.

And after that, it's just a matter of everyone settling into a happy fix-it AU. Anakin leaves the Jedi on amicable terms and goes off to do whatever, who cares. Padme stays on Naboo to reconnect with her family. The war ends, the Separatists probably have to realize how little of their government actually functioned and maybe gain a few clues about the atrocities done in their name. Some of them ultimately rejoin the Republic in the wake of these revelations, others refuse and try to continue their own government together, but this time they're actually able to make a treaty with the Republic. The clones are able to stand up for themselves and refuse to continue to be an army for a Republic no longer at war and the Senate votes to demilitarize. The Jedi's work doesn't end with the war, peacekeeping involves a lot more than just fighting after all and this is the part of the job all of them have been hoping to make it back to.

Obi-Wan decides to take Yoda up on his offer and rejoins the Jedi Order as Yoda's last Padawan to finish the journey he started so long ago.

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